The “Adoration of the Magi” forms the subject of the central panel, while the “Ascension” and the “Presentation in the Temple” are represented on the wings. All three are marked by the miniature-like finish which reveals the thoroughly practised hand and loving zeal of one who took delight in carrying his work to the highest possible perfection. In the seated Virgin, of the strong type of womanhood which Andrea seems to prefer, with the flight of cherubs encircling her head, and the patches of rough herbage starting out of the rocks behind her, we recognise the original of his own unfinished engraving, the “Virgin of the Grotto.” The red cherub-heads, which remind us of the similar wreath with which Giovanni Bellini surrounds one of his Madonnas in the Academy of Venice, are again introduced in “The Ascension.” Here the group of apostles, who gaze upwards, have more of the slender form used by Pizzolo in the Eremitani frescoes, and the panel is inferior as a whole to “The Presentation.” This is in Mantegna’s best manner, the principal figures full of grace and dignity, the heads excellent in expression, especially that of the child sucking his finger as he leans against his mother, while Andrea’s historic feeling appears in the typical reliefs of “Moses breaking the Tables” and “Abraham sacrificing Isaac,” which adorn the altar. Another fine rendering of this subject by Mantegna is now in the Berlin Gallery, which also possesses two other works belonging to this period, a half-length “Madonna holding the Child on a Parapet,” and a portrait of an old ecclesiastic. Probably this Madonna was the very one of which Vasari speaks as painted by Mantegna, for his old friend, the famous orator, Matteo Bossi, Abbot of Fiesole, since the frame decorated with angels and instruments of the Passion exactly corresponds with his description, and the strikingly-truthful portrait may well be that of the Abbot himself, whose friendship for the painter neither time nor distance seems to have impaired. A “Death of the Virgin,” with a view of Mantua and its lake seen through a colonnade, now at Madrid, and chiaroscuro figures known as “Summer” and “Autumn,” now at Hamilton Palace, may be mentioned as painted about 1470, when Andrea was engaged in works at the Castle of Mantua.